


Greenheart

by Nightelfbane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Flora & Fauna, Alien Planet, Alien Sex, Aliens, Bioluminescence, Classic Venus, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Jungle, Lasers, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Old Venus, Science Fiction, Space Flight, Venus - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 13:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11921625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightelfbane/pseuds/Nightelfbane
Summary: Eddy McAllister has crash landed on the jungle planet of Venus, and his only companions are vicious predators.





	Greenheart

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are always appreciated. Please point out any grammatical / spelling errors you see.

            The man assigned to debrief test pilot Eddy McAllister sat on the other side of the table, across from Eddy. “So…this is a creature that evolved specifically to eat humanoids, like the ancient Venusians.”

            “That’s correct. Somewhat.”

            “A creature that is credited for the destruction of the entire Venusian race.”

            “Credited for, not responsible for. Entirely.”

            “The creature that wiped out the first landing party on Venus.”

            “The 5th guy shot himself, you can’t count him.”

            “…and you’re having sex with it.”

            “With  _her_. And yes.” Eddy was grinning.

            The man, Carlos Hanson, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning…”

***

            Right, so they hired me to test their fancy new fighter. Let me tell you right now, that thing sucks. It’s ugly as hell and wouldn’t last four seconds in an atmospheric dogfight, even if its prop core didn’t cut out randomly when you go too fast. Add to that the fact that the weapons fire five degrees to the left of where the targeting system says they’re pointing and a whole shit ton of smaller bugs and the score for this fighter is not flattering.

            My flight plan was to take off from Earth and head to the asteroid belt to test the weapon systems and try out some fine maneuvers between the asteroids, then swing by Venus and try some atmospheric maneuvers against the fuckin’ jungle dragons they have there. I was weaving in between rocks the size of Maine while trying to blast the smaller ones – but the targeting system was broken. So when I pulled a turn around one of the smaller rocks and found my path blocked by another asteroid, my plasma bolts only blasted off a couple crumbs from the side. I tried to turn, but the damn prop core cut out halfway through the maneuver. The side of my fighter was slammed against a rock roughly three times the size of my fighter. That just about killed the prop core entirely, which was now flickering off and on constantly. I limped out of the asteroid belt at a more sedate speed, and tried to repair the core.

            I managed to fix it somewhat, but it still flickered occasionally at any speed. I really should have cut the whole trip short, go back to Earth and tell the techs that their fighter sucks, but I didn’t want to admit failure just yet. I’ll skip the Europa landing, I told myself. To be honest, I was looking forward to seeing the jungle dragons.

            I set a course for Venus, doing some calculations to find the optimum speed to account for the busted prop core. It would take hours to reach my destination, so I activated the autopilot and went to sleep.

            No, no, I’m joking. After the subpar performance of the fighter so far, I wasn’t letting it do anything without my supervision. I did activate the autopilot but I remained awake so I could see if it could get me to where I wanted to go without killing me first.

            To its credit, the autopilot worked wonderfully. Venus was a cloudy gray marble in my cockpit’s window just three hours later. I reestablished control and took the fighter down into the atmosphere, which is about when everything went to hell.

            The engines  _really_  didn’t like Venus. As soon as I hit atmo, they shut down completely. Probably some damage I couldn’t detect with my diagnostics console. My hands flew over the controls as I frantically tried to figure out what the problem was. It turns out, the hull had cracked after the impact with the asteroid and the sensors neglected to tell me (stupid techs). The change in pressure in the fighter’s guts had knocked the engines offline, leaving me dead in the air.

            About the time that I figured this out, I broke through Venus’s permanent cloud cover and Aphrodite Terra was visible through the windows, spinning wildly as my fighter plummeted through free fall. I hadn’t been able to get the engines back online, so I tried to use maneuvering thrusters to stabilize the fighter. They still worked, fortunately, so at least I wasn’t spinning anymore. But I was still falling. I checked my altitude. I was too high to deploy a parachute, but I wanted to run quick diagnostics on it first. The parachute systems came back green, but these same sensors had failed to detect the hull breach.  Whatever, it’s not like I had a choice in the matter.

            I checked my altitude again and tried to deploy the parachute, but of course it was jammed. If I was a suspicious man, I’d think the designers were trying to kill me. I found the emergency parachute release and hit it, keeping my eyes on the altimeter the whole time. The parachute finally deployed and my rapid descent slow, but I was still falling much too fast. I crouched down and covered my head as the thick green mass of Venus’ surface approached.  

            My fighter hit the thick jungle canopy and I don’t remember much after that. I woke up in dim, dappled sunlight. My head was throbbing and my neck was on fire. There were strange sounds coming from outside the fighter. Hoots and rustlings, among other things. I groaned and reached around, trying to figure out where I was. As my hands ran over the console, everything started to come back to me. The asteroid, the parachute, the crash.

             I remembered where the cockpit release was located and pressed the button. The dome above me lifted a few centimeters and then stopped, screeching and grinding unpleasantly. Sunlight streamed in through the crack. I undid the safety straps and repositioned myself so I could kick upwards at the dome. My feet slammed against it and widened the opening by another few centimeters. It took three more kicks for me to create an opening I could squeeze through. I grabbed my solar powered laser pistol out from under the seat before I crawled out of the fighter.

            I stood on top of the fighter and looked around. The sounds I heard earlier were the sounds of the jungle. The cries of hundreds of thousands of plants and animals desperately screaming in their attempts to eat each other. Dark trees towered above me, strung with vines and branches so thick that trees were caught in the web before they fell to the ground. A large tunnel through the whole mess was cut, and rain and dim sunlight streamed through it, illuminating my fighter. It lay in the mud at just about a 45 degree angle next to a tree, with its nose pointing upwards.

            My fighter was shaped like a goddamn potato. It had the standard two blades on the side as part of the propulsion system, making it look like a spud caught in a spider web. I knew its shape would give it terrible maneuverability in atmosphere, even before I tested it. I climbed off the fighter and down to the ground where mud squished under my boots.

            I circled my fighter and assessed the damage. The right side had cracks all over it, probably from the asteroid collision. Through them I could see the machinery inside. Hull integrity score: low.

            With the damn thing buried in the mud like that, I couldn’t get to the engine hatch so I could conduct some real repairs. I climbed back up to the cockpit and went behind the seat for the emergency supplies. Everything was there; food, first aid kits, water, various other equipment. Except one very important little thing was missing.

             _They hadn’t loaded the fucking distress beacon_.

            I suppose I should have seen that coming. Their shitty new fighter was top secret and I had to sign a phonebook of a contract saying that I wouldn’t tell anyone about it. They didn’t want to risk me setting up a beacon and having the Martians or the Saturn moon colonies swoop in and scooping it up. Not that the piece of shit was worth anything.

            So I was stranded on what was widely considered the second deadliest planet in the solar system, with no distress beacon, only two weeks’ worth of food and water, and just a tiny little laser pistol to defend myself with. To top it all off, I started hearing voices. Or rather,  _her_ voice.

 _Carlos: You mean_ its _voice._

_Eddy: No. Shut up._

“A human, hmm? Here? Not for long, I suspect”

            Her voice is like leaves rustling all around you, barely distinguishable from the rest of the jungle, but it  _draws_  you. There’s a reason they call her species the Sirens of Venus. Her voice was coming from behind a patch of foliage and vines strung between two trees. I grabbed my knife from the survival kit and started cutting my way through.

            The jungle was so thick that it took me almost an hour to carve a tunnel instead of a path, even though the origin of the voice was scant meters away from my crash site. What I found was a small sunlit clearing, completely devoid of vines. In the center of it was a gorgeous ghost of a woman, standing on a bed of massive leaves. Her skin was pale white with curving lines of violet roaming her body. Her hair was just as white as her skin, but it hung down to her bare shoulders in thin, tapering tendrils instead of strands.

            Her species had Venusian features, or so everyone assumed since the Venusians went extinct thousands of years ago. She had the predatory fangs, high cheekbones, and sharp red eyes set above a sultry smile that beckoned me to her. There was still some foliage between me and her and I began cutting through it with reckless abandon, which probably saved my life. My wild slashes opened up the path to the Siren, along with the skin on my left arm, letting blood flow onto the jungle floor. I gasped in pain and dropped the knife.

            “Fucking goddamn…” I hissed. The pain had snapped me out of whatever hypnosis her voice and beauty put over me. I reached down to pick up the knife and noticed the thorns sticking out of the ground.

            “Leave it…come to me!” Her voice washed over me again, but my mind was fixing on something else. I took a closer look at the clearing and noticed several things. One, there were thorns sticking out of the ground at regular intervals, curving in towards the woman in the center of the clearing. Second, the woman had numerous tendrils growing out of her back, connecting her to the ground. That tipped me off to what she was.

            The ethereal woman in front of me was a false. The “bed of leaves” she was standing on was actually the center of an enormous plant. What I had mistaken for a bed was the plant’s leaves. They lay flat on the ground, with poison thorns on the topside.

           She’s a fucking Venus Mantrap. If I were to go to her, those huge leaves would whip upwards, piercing me with their thorns and paralyzing me as they dumped me into a cleverly concealed moat that surrounded the woman. There, I would hopefully drown in her digestive juices. Otherwise I’d feel my skin dissolve and my eyes melt over several days.

           “Come on, I’m waiting…” she purred. Even then I was still tempted, but not enough to drive me out of my wits like before. I picked up my knife and backed away.

           “Oh no. I know what you are. I come over there you’ll swallow me whole.”

           “I thought men liked that?”

           “You know what I mean! I am  _not_ getting eaten today!” I turned back the way I came and came face to face with a Venusian crocodile tiger standing in the middle of the tunnel. Six legs with webbed, clawed feet and green, scaly skin covered with natural plate armor. A crocodilian head with four blue slanted eyes, and a mouth filled with inward curving teeth. The top of my head was level with its lower jaw. It stood just a meter away.

          The Siren chuckled. Her voice might be like rustling leaves, but her laughter was like rain. “You were saying?”

          The crocodile tiger and I stared at each other for a split second before we both burst into action. I lunged to the left as it lunged forward, towards me. I crashed into the foliage and it sailed past me, missing me by centimeters. It landed with its left middle foot on one of the Siren’s leaves, between two thorns. She whipped the leaf up and hooked it with a thorn in an attempt to pull it closer, but all she succeeded in doing was tearing a gash in its leg with her thorn. It snarled towards her and quickly backed out of her reach.

          Meanwhile, I was booking it back towards the fighter. I heard the tiger come pounding after me on its six legs. I drew my pistol and fired back towards it while I fled. My pistol fired a continuous beam as long as I held the trigger down, and the red blade of light burned the jungle and evaporated the water that rested on it. Coincidentally it also ran across the crocodile tiger’s face, blinding one of its eyes and eliciting a shriek of pain. Unfortunately, the pistol was a low powered model and can’t penetrate the crocodile tiger’s armor in such a short time. But it did buy me some time to get back to my crashed fighter. It also helped that it was sluggish from the poison thorn.

          I exited the tunnel, leapt onto my fighter, and climbed into the cockpit. I tried to close the hatch but it was broken after the crash. I started to curse but was interrupted by the hatch slamming down on its own, scaring the wits out of me. At first I thought that my button-mashing had caused it, but it was the crocodile tiger’s doing. It had seen me climb into the cockpit and had pounced, hitting the hatch and partially shutting it. The crocodile tiger slid off the fighter and circled around in front of it. I got an idea and tried to power up the fighter’s weapon systems. For once, it worked without a hitch. My targeting systems came online and I placed the targeting reticule just to the right of the crocodile tiger, which was crouching down and getting ready to pounce again.

         It was just my luck that the crash had fixed whatever bug had been plaguing the targeting systems. For once, the plasma bolts went right where the targeting systems said they would. Which wasn’t the crocodile tiger that was trying to eat me. 

        On the plus side, the explosion of dirt, smoke, and burning plant matter scared the crocodile tiger into jumping to the left with a surprised scream instead of towards me. I adjusted my aim and fired again, but it had already jumped to the right. Another explosion. Then the beast was on my fighter and out of the line of fire of my guns. It started trying to pry open the cockpit hatch. I think I remember screaming. I drew my pistol, much good it would do me. The crocodile tiger had succeeded in opening the hatch, but it had to hold it open and the opening was barely big enough for its snout. It reached in with its head and snapped at me, its tooth-filled face just centimeters away from my own. I could see the glistening mucous membranes in its mouth around the flailing tongue. 

       I wish I could say I did what I did next on purpose, but really, I wasn’t thinking much of anything at the time. By the time it had gotten its face inside the cockpit I was firing wildly. It was just blind luck that the beam went straight into the armored hellbeast’s gullet.

       Its armor plating might be able to stand up to a low powered laser, but its soft insides were another story. My beam cut through its body, eventually burning out through the other side between two armor plates. The smell of burning meat filled the air as the crocodile slumped down and slid off the fighter, falling to the jungle floor with a thumb.

       I sat in the cockpit for a few moments, gathering myself. The stench was overpowering. I forced open the cockpit hatch and promptly vomited over the side.

       I crawled out of the fighter and looked down at the crocodile tiger. It was sprawled on its side in the mud, its three remaining eyes staring into space. My breakfast was splashed onto its left side.

      “The lizard stopped snarling, and I don’t hear it eating. I assume that means you’re alive?” The Siren’s voice drifted through to me again, but it was less intense this time. Like she wasn’t trying to hypnotize me this time. Still, I walked back through the tunnel.

      "Ha! I didn’t expect that,” she said when I emerged from the tunnel.

      “Neither did I, to be honest.” My hands were on my knees and I was panting.

      “You should join me.”

      I looked up at her. “Just cut it out, alright? I know what-“

      “There will be more lizards.”

      That stopped me.

      “What do you mean?”

      “The lizard, what do you call it?”

      “Crocodile tiger.”

      “Right, a crocodile tiger. It’s a very territorial animal. More of them will come here, wanting to claim its territory. They’ll tear you apart and eat you alive. Giving yourself to me would be easier.”

      “You would eat me alive too.”

      “So use that laser you have. Just position yourself so you fall onto my leaves.”

      “I’m not going to shoot myself! Besides, I don’t plan to stay here. There’s a colony on Aphrodite Terra, isn’t there?”

      “Too far for you to walk.”

      She was right. Even if I knew where I was in relation to the colony, I couldn’t cut my way through kilometers and kilometers of Venusian jungle. Not without getting eaten or stung by something with too many legs.

     “Well then…I guess I’m stuck here with you.”

      She smiled at me, showing her long fangs. A predatory spark shined in her bright red eyes.

* * *

            Hours later and I was back at the fighter, which was where I had set up camp. I was butchering the crocodile tiger, or trying to, anyway. I’d never done anything like that before. I had started by prying off the armor plates, planning to clean the leftover tissue off of it with the laser. I figured I could use them for something. Then I started cutting out chunks of meat. The Terran government should find me before my supplies ran out, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure.

            Night started to fall. The omnipresent sounds of the jungle began to change. Hoots and howls turned to grunts and snarls and high pitched chirps. I took a tarp from the supply kit and covered the crocodile tiger’s remains with it, hoping to protect it from scavengers. I didn’t want them eating my meat. I put the meat I had carved out in a storage container, washed my hands, then I climbed into the fighter and tried to fix the hatch. The fighter was my only shelter and I needed to be able to open and close the hatch at will. I was so focused on my work I didn’t notice how much further the jungle changed around me until I paused to relieve myself.

            The trees’ leaves were shining with glowing blue dots arranged in symmetrical patterns, a different one on each tree. The ferns and other smaller plants were glowing in a variety of colors, painting the jungle orange and green and purple. I could see a couple patches of light moving through the foliage, and I assumed they were animals.

            It was the second most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

            Through the tunnel I had cut to the Siren, a strong white light was shining. I walked through the tunnel and froze. Her leaves were shimmering and shifting colors, like a cuttlefish. The tips of her hair tendril were glowing bright red, as were her eyes. A trail of luminescent red dots went down from her shoulders, across her chest and stomach, and eventually terminated around her ankles. Her pearl white skin was shining brightly, illuminating the clearing where she lived. Her red light bled into the white, throwing splashes of crimson across the clearing floor. Her curving violet lines remained dark. She was kneeling on the ground facing away from me, waving her shining red fingertips at a patch of green and blue lights in the foliage.

            The patch of lights eventually wandered into her clearing, just outside the edge of her leaves. The lights belonged to an animal roughly the size of a dog, with diamond shaped patches of green bioluminescence across its broad back. It had a number of eye stalks that glowed blue. I couldn’t make out much else. It seemed hesitant to go deeper into the clearing (and onto the Siren’s leaves), but I could tell it was enraptured with her lightshow.

            She began wiggling her fingers faster, and began to shake her head, setting her shining hair dancing. She blinked her eyes in random patterns, shutting off their light. Sometimes one, sometimes both.

            Eventually the animal lost its hesitation. It moved onto one of her leaves and would have proceeded towards her, but all her leaves whipped up with a  _whoosh!_  The light from the Siren was cut off as she was enclosed in a room of her own making. I could hear the animal screeching as it fell into her underground stomach, and suddenly stop.

            Eventually the leaves settled gently back down onto the ground. The Siren finally noticed me, and smiled. Red light shined through her fangs. She began giving me the same light show she gave the animal, although more…sensuously.

            I caught myself stepping forward, and looked down. I was one step away from her leaves. The crimson glow splashed onto my legs as I looked at them.

            I turned away and walked quickly back through the tunnel. I didn’t get much sleep that night.

* * *

            It had been a few days since that first night, and I hadn’t gone to the Siren or heard anything from her since. I had finished butchering the crocodile tiger. I spent most of my time in the fighter, away from the vicious jungle bugs. I also toyed with the idea of using its communication systems to send out a distress signal, but I quickly learned that the people who hired me had discreetly sabotaged those systems as well. They really didn’t want anyone else finding out about this fighter.

            I really didn’t have much to do other than sit on my ass and wait. I could try to hunt or forage but what the hell do I know about surviving in the jungle? I barely knew how to cook the crocodile tiger meat (which tasted terrible, by the way). I  _did_  have a survival guide in my kit, but its section of Venus was limited, mostly because most of the people crazy enough to visit this planet already have the necessary knowledge and skills to survive here. When the hours stretched out and I grew bored I started scrolling through the survival guide looking for plants I could eat, or possibly use for medicine.

            But I still had long hours with absolutely nothing to do. I considered starting an audio journal but then I realized I had nothing to record. “Day four, nothing significant has happened.” I guess that’s why I started visiting the Siren.

            After days of inactivity, the tunnel I had cut through to her clearing was starting to grow back in. I had to cut my way through it again. When I emerged on the other side, she was laying on one of her leaves, her head resting on her arm. She opened her eyes when I entered the clearing.

            “What are you doing here?” She didn’t seem very intent on luring me into her trap. Maybe she wasn’t hungry.

            “I brought some parts of the crocodile tiger that I can’t use. I figured if you’re fed then you won’t try to eat me.” I was carrying a cylindrical container full of lizard bits.

            “No promises. Dump it on the leaves.”

            I opened the container and dumped the refuse onto one of her leaves. She lifted it up and the contents slid into the “pitcher” that was her stomach. She set the leaf down and refolded her smaller leaves over the opening.

            “I meant here. Where you call Venus.”

            “I crashed here while I was testing a fighter craft.”

            “Yes, I remember humans claim to come from the sky, beyond the clouds.”

            “It’s true!”

            “It can’t be. There’s nothing beyond the clouds.”

            I opened my mouth and shut it again. With the permanent cloud cover on Venus, she had never seen the stars. The sun was an indistinct smear of light across the sky. Being anchored to one place for her entire life, she had never seen an ocean. She had probably never seen a lot of things I had taken for granted.

            “Where do you think we come from, then?”

            “Somewhere else.”

            “That’s not very specific.”

            “I only know a small area, uhh…what’s your name?”

            “Eddy McAllister. Do you have a name?”

            “Of course.”

            “Well, what is it?”

            “Ziri.”

            “So, Ziri, you don’t believe there’s anything past the clouds?”

            She sat up and shook her head. “It’s just clouds all the way through.”

            “I’ll be right back. I want to show you something.”

            I went back to my fighter and powered up the computer. I downloaded navigational data into the data pad that my survival guide was stored on. The holographic display lit up with stars and constellations. I went back to Ziri and tossed her the pad.

            “ _That’s_  what’s behind the clouds.”

            She studied the pad. “What is this?”

            “Those are stars. Millions of lights in the sky that you could see from the ground. Humans have been studying them for millennia.”

            She shook her head and tossed the pad back.

            “You don’t believe me? Why would I make that up?”

            She stretched back out on the ground and stared at the sky. I tried not to stare as well. “I don’t think you’re lying. The Venusians believed that we ‘Sirens’ as you call us were created when a Venusian ventured too far into the jungle. According to them, the jungle would reach out and impale them with its thorns, planting a seed in their chest. The seed would take root in their hearts and turn them into a Siren. They truly believed that.” She looked back at me. “But they were wrong. Just as you’re wrong about the sky.”

            I wanted to press the issue, but decided that there wasn’t any point to it. I sat down at the edge of her clearing. “Tell me about the ancient Venusians.”

            She told me about a proud society on the tallest mountain of Aphrodite Terra. Organized into a caste system, ruled by a king and queen. They carved grand balconies out of the mountains and decorated them with flowers that released large tufts of bioluminescent pollen into the air. They turned tunnels into temples and worshipped a pantheon of reptile and avian gods. They hated and feared the jungle; the lowest castes lived lower on the mountains, and were preyed upon by Sirens and other predators. The royalty resided at the peak in an awesome palace, holding court in the open air.

            She told me about the western plague that swept through the mountains, sparing no one. Even the queen was struck down by the plague they called the Drown, on account of how its victims’ lungs filled with blood. The kingdom’s death knell came when the mountain of their society erupted, destroying the royal palace and sending lava and rubble flooding down the slopes. The lower castes were forced to flee into the jungle. Already poor and underfed, they fell prey to the jungle.

            The Sirens are credited with the extinction of the Venusians because they were the most feared monster that the Venusians knew. There were statues of crocodile tigers and jungle dragons built in Venusian temples. The Sirens were considered soul eaters, enemies of creation. Nothing was written of with more fear than the Sirens. Terran xenoarchaeologists misinterpreted this and blamed the Sirens for the Venusian extinction. It didn’t help that the first landing party on Venus fell prey a series of Sirens. In reality, many predators of the jungle were responsible for wiping out the remaining Venusians.

            Ziri asked me about where I was from. I told her about the aquatic colony off the west coast of North America where I was born. I told her about the transparent, underwater domes where the people lived and watched whales swim by. She was fascinated by the idea of an ocean. She knew of the concept but had never seen one.

            We talked until the jungle started to glimmer, and I watched her lure another animal into her maw. She didn’t try to lure me this time.

* * *

            I stood on the edge of Ziri’s clearing, looking up.

            It was early morning, and Ziri was sitting in the center of her clearing, idly curling a hair tendril around her finger. “What are you looking at?”

            “My people should have come for me by now.”

It had been over two weeks. I had eaten everything from the crocodile tiger and was almost out of rations. Where the hell was the rescue?

            Unbeknownst to me, they were scouring the asteroid belt and starting wars. They’d never believed I had made it to Venus. They thought I had been crushed in the asteroid belt or captured by the Saturn moon colonies. They spent equal time searching the belt and accusing the colonies of stealing their fighter. Of course, they didn’t know a damn thing about the fighter (until the Terran government told them about it) and denied everything, which just made the Terran government angry. Eventually they calmed down and wrote me off as killed in the asteroid belt. But while they were caught up in their pissing contest I was about to go hungry.

             Worse, I’m pretty sure some crocodile tigers were sniffing around the place. In my searches for food I had found their tracks through the foliage. I told Ziri as such, and she simply said that she told me so.

            We were talking regularly by now. I’d wake up, eat breakfast, then walk over to her clearing. We’d spend a couple hours talking and then would forage for lunch. I’d eat while we talked some more. We went into more detail about where we came from. She told me more about the Sirens and I told her more about humans. We learned a lot about each other and our respective peoples – and she  _is_  a person, don’t give me that look. I think we even considered each other to be friends.

            Things went south a few days later. My morning started pleasantly enough. When I walked into her clearing Ziri lifted one of her leaves to reveal a lizard about the size of a skateboard.

            “It wandered into my clearing last night and I suffocated it under my leaf. I wanted to repay you for the crocodile lizard you gave me.” She smiled and used her leaf to push the lizard towards me.

            “Hey, thanks.” I smiled back at her and took the lizard, happy for the extra food.

             _Eddy: Hey, I just realized. Ziri and I basically courted each other by giving each other dead animals. That’s fucked up._

_Carlos: Not any more fucked up than the fact that you two courted in the first place._

            This time we spoke more about where I came from. I told her more about oceans and the animals that lived in them. She was intrigued by the idea of a whale, but was even more interested in something a little more mundane: tourists.

            “They came to your home just to see the whales?”

            “Yeah, they did. Tourism brought a lot of money to my home so there was a lot of encouragement to come see the whales.”

            She shook her head. “I can’t understand that. Travelling so far for something so trivial?”

            Now that I think about it, travelling  _would_  be a somewhat alien concept for a Siren. They  _were_ plants, after all. At the time, I was under the mistaken impression that they didn’t travel at all, but I’ll get to that later.

            I kept talking about my home and the ocean it was in. She was sitting cross legged a meter or so in front of me, as close to the edge of her clearing as she could get what with those tendrils growing out of her back. Suddenly, she interrupted me. “Kiss me.”

            I stopped. Even when she was stretching her tendrils, getting that close to her would require stepping onto her leaves, and then I would be at her mercy. For a second, I was really tempted. We had known each other for weeks now I really did consider her to be a friend, and I wasn’t opposed to the idea of her being something more. The fact that she was beautiful and exotic didn’t hurt, either. But no, I didn’t. She was still a Siren, and when it came down to it, I didn’t trust her to not eat me.

            “I thought we moved past this,” I said.

            “No, I’m serious.” She was staring at me intently, leaning forward as far as she could. She smiled radiantly (literally – she was still luminescing a little from the night before) and held her hand out to me. Suddenly, I was angry.

            “That’s it, then. That’s all I am to you, just prey? I thought we were past that, Ziri!” I was almost shouting by the end.

            The smile disappeared from her face as she shot to her feet. “That’s not what I-”

            “Isn’t it? That’s what you are, right?”

            Her expression was hurt and confused now, but at the time I was too mad to notice. “Eddy, I don’t-”

            I cut her off. “All our talks, all this time we spent together, was that just to get me more comfortable with you? To make me trust you?” I was hurt that she would use our friendship as a way to lure me to her.

            She was furious that I thought she was capable of such a thing. “That’s  _not_  what I am! I might be a predator but I still have a heart!”

            This continued on for a while. I accused her of trying to eat me and she accused me of being a heartless, paranoid coward. I can’t say she was wrong. I stormed off back to my fighter and started the daily chores with a cloud over my head. I didn’t realize until lunch that I had left the lizard at her clearing, but I was too proud to go and retrieve it.

* * *

            We didn’t see each other for a few days. After weeks of constant conversation I had forgotten how damn boring Venus was without a companion. My days were once again filled with long hours of absolutely nothing. I found myself glancing at the tunnel to Ziri’s clearing more than once. Little seeds of doubt were growing in my head. Had she truly been trying to catch me? Or were her feelings genuine?

            I tried to distract myself by hunting. I actually managed to kill something too, and I was butchering it at my campsite. The air was ripe with the smell of blood and laser burned flesh, which I think was what drew them to me. It was getting dark, and the jungle was starting its lightshow. I was elbow deep into the animal when something emerged from the foliage in front of me. I raised my head and looked.

            Once again, I found myself face to face with a crocodile tiger. Slightly smaller than the first one, its four triangular eyes were shining with a ghostly blue light. They cast patches of light on the ground as it ever so slowly emerged the rest of the way from the jungle. Saliva dropped out of its mouth and littered the jungle floor with glowing green dots. More blue light shined from between its armor plating.

            My mind refused to work. My laser pistol wasn’t even half a meter away but I couldn’t seem to register anything. I just watched as the crocodile tiger stalked closer and closer to where I was sitting. I just watched as it suddenly stopped and started sniffing the air, casting about for whatever scent that caught its attention. I just watched as another crocodile tiger emerged from the jungle on my right.

            The one in front of me turned away and faced the newcomer, both of them growling and snarling. They lunged at each other, colliding in a whirlwind of blue and green lights. That snapped me back to reality. I grabbed my laser pistol and retreated back to my fighter’s cockpit. They were out of the firing arc of my fighter’s plasma cannons, so all I could do was watch them fight. They tore at each other in a frenzy of claws, teeth, and light. I could barely make out the individual limbs, they were moving so fast.

            One of them was rolled onto its back. It was the first one, I think. I couldn’t tell very well. The entire area was awash with bioluminescence. The second one tore into the first, ravaging its unprotected belly with a vengeance. It shoved its snout deep into its rival’s torso and tore out its heart. The loser bled its lifeblood into the jungle while the victor feasted. Then it turned towards me again.

            I fired my laser pistol at it, scoring a hit on its armored shoulder. It roared at me, showing bloody teeth in a glowing green maw. I held down the trigger, trying to hold the beam steady on its face, hoping to score another lucky mouth hit. The crocodile tiger shrugged off the laser fire and bounded towards me. It leaped up over the fighter and I crouched down in the cockpit as far as I could go, still firing the laser at it.

            It’s right front arm grazed my chest as it passed over me, tearing two long but shallow gashes across my right pec. I screamed as the pain hit me like fire. The crocodile tiger sailed over into the foliage, hitting the jungle wall with its side and becoming tangled in the omnipresent vines. I grabbed the laser pistol out of my right hand and fired with my left, trying not to cut the vines holding the crocodile tiger captive. I focused on a spot between two armor plates, trying to get through the softer scales. The beast thrashed and screamed as I cut through its skin and boiled its insides, further entangling it in the foliage. Eventually it went still.

             I took a deep breath and let it out. The entire jungle was silent, and even the lights in the trees seemed still. Favoring my wounded side, I climbed out of the fighter. The two crocodile tigers were already growing dimmer. Warm blood was flowing down my torso, soaking my already ragged flight suit. I went back to the fighter and got the first aid kit. I started patching myself up when a fucking  _third_  crocodile tiger poked its head out of the foliage, from the same direction as the second one.

            That night was not my night.

            It crept out of the jungle like a shining spirit, ignoring the corpses strewn about. It could smell my blood, and my fear. I dropped the first aid kit and began backing away, towards Ziri’s clearing. I remembered the pistol in my left hand, raised it, and fired. My aim was considerably better after over two weeks on Venus, and I hit one of the crocodile tiger’s eyes on my first try. It roared in fury and backed away a step, shielding the injured side of its face. I turned and ran down the tunnel towards Ziri’s clearing.

            Behind me, I heard a roar and a scuffle. I didn’t look back until I got to the clearing. Ziri was standing in the center, lighting up the night with white and crimson light. I saw yet another crocodile tiger exchanging blows with the third, just outside the tunnel. Ziri was right; they had sensed the death of the one I had killed two weeks ago and moved in to claim its territory.

            I turned back to Ziri, feeling helpless. “How many fucking are there?!”

            She shook her head. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Come here.” She beckoned me closer.

            I hesitated, looking at the poison thorns on her leaves.

            “Eddy,” she snapped. I looked back up at her glowing eyes. “In less than two minutes one of those crocodile tigers will be dead and the other one will come for you. You can either take a chance with me or wait here and get killed by the lizard.”

            I looked back towards the two crocodile tigers. One of them was on its side and was using all six of its limbs to strike at the other. I turned back to Ziri.

            “Eddy, I promise I won’t hurt you. Just come here.”

            The one on its side managed to score a blow across the other’s neck, and had opened one of the blood vessels. The wounded one backed off, bleeding profusely. The first one climbed to its feet and snarled, moving in for the kill. Its rival turned and fled back into the jungle, giving up on the chance for new territory. The victor turned towards me once again and began loping forward.

            I started letting out a stream of curses under my breath and stepped onto Ziri’s leaves.  _One foot in front of the other_ , I told myself. Well, Ziri wasn’t having that. She grabbed me by the arm and yanked me closer. I lost my balance and fell, feeling the rush of air behind me. She caught me and helped me up. I turned and saw the victorious crocodile tiger standing just outside the edge of Ziri’s leaves. It had taken a swipe at me as I fell.

            Ziri pushed me behind her and faced the beast by herself. Her leaves were pulsing and swirling with light. The crocodile tiger snarled at her, and for a second I thought it was going to step onto her leaves and tear us both to shreds. But it just went back into the jungle, its territory claimed and all contenders vanquished.

            I had fallen again when Ziri pushed me, and she helped me up, immediately pulling me in for a kiss. That took me by surprise and I struggled for a moment before returning the kiss.

            I was wrong, before. It  _was_  my night. It really, really was.

* * *

            The next morning, Ziri and I were lying beside each other as the jungle grew darker and the sky grew brighter. During the night, I had run back to my campsite and grabbed some supplies before returning, including the first aid kit. Ziri had bandaged my chest and cleaned the blood off my shoulder, chest, and arm.

            I sat up and looked at Ziri. Her lights were dimming as the sun brightened the sky, but she was still luminescing slightly.

            “Well,” she said. “Now what?”

            Shit, I was always terrible at these conversations. “I, uhh…”

            “We obviously can’t stay here, in the lizard’s hunting grounds.”

            Oh, she meant something else. “I don’t see that we have a choice, what with you, uhh…you’re a plant.”

            She gave me a dry look. “I  _can_ leave this place, y’know. Did you think I’ve been here my entire life?”

            “Wait, seriously? How? Also, yes.”

            She gestured to the tendrils growing out of her back, connecting her to the pitcher in the ground. As I watched, she reached down and plucked them out, one by one.

            My eyes were wide. “Umm…Wait a second, you could have done that and knocked me over the head while I was sleeping any time?”

            Ziri looked me in the eyes. “It wouldn’t have been worth it. The reconnecting process is long and tedious.”

            “Reconnecting?”

            She nodded. “We detach from our pitchers and meet other Sirens to…what’s the word? I haven’t spoken your language in decades. ”

            “Reproduce?”

            “Yes, reproduce. After, we travel to a new pitcher and reconnect our tendrils.”

            “Couldn’t you just…not? You could keep travelling.”

            ”No, we can’t. These bodies can only be separate from a pitcher for a certain amount of time before they starve to death. The pitchers  _are_  our digestion systems.”

            “Well…where are you planning on going?”

            She pointed west into the jungle. “We’re going to the mountain of the Venusians. I know of a pitcher I can connect to at the base, on the outskirts of the jungle. There are less predators there, and some ruins you can shelter in.”

            I grabbed my flight suit and started getting dressed. “I want to go grab some more supplies from my fighter. Want to join me?” I helped her up and I showed her to my campsite.

* * *

            We travelled through the upper levels of the jungle, walking over branches like bridges. Few predators that were dangerous to us prowled this high up, and those that were dangerous were taken care of with my laser pistol. We moved quickly, trying to get to the mountain before Ziri wasted away. Already, she was showing signs of degrading. At night, she didn’t shine as brightly as usual. She assured me that we had plenty of time to get to our destination.

            She was right. The jungle got thinner as we got closer to the mountain, and eventually we could even see the mountain through the sparse foliage. We stopped travelling along the branches and started walking on the ground. We broke out of the jungle and the mountain towered above us, almost kissing the ever present clouds of the Venusian skies.

            We could see the ruins of the ancient Venusians, dotting the slopes of the mountain. The lower slopes were littered with cube shaped buildings, crammed together around narrow streets and alleys. The higher slopes bore the more damaged remains of grander structures, damaged by the volcanic eruption centuries ago. There was no trace of the royal palace at the top.

            Ziri lead me to the pitcher she had talked about, on a large terrace that used to be a farm plot. We were tramping through overgrown weeds when Ziri grabbed me by the arm and yanked me back.

            “Hey, what’s-” She pointed towards the ground where I was about to step. I quieted down when I saw the poisoned thorns atop the large leaves of a Siren’s pitcher.

            “Is it still dangerous?”

            “To you, yes. Not to me.”

            She stepped onto the leaves, avoiding the poisoned thorns. She walked into the center of the pitcher and laid down, inserting the tendrils from her back into small openings in the plant.

            “I won’t be able to move for a few days while I connect to this pitcher.” She shifted to a more comfortable position. “Could you please clear the weeds from around this place?”

            I knelt down and kissed her, and then I started building a home in the ruins of Venus.

* * *

            “That was over six years ago.” Eddy McAllister yawned as he finished his tale.

            Carlos scrolled through the pad he was holding, reading information on Eddy’s situation. “You were found by a class of students studying xenoarchaeology, correct?”

            “Yeah, that’s right. They wanted to study the ruins.”

            “Well, Eddy, I imagine that the Terran Space Force is going to want to talk to you about their fighter, and then you’ll be free to return to Earth.”

            “Earth? Mr. Hanson, I don’t think you understand.”

            Carlos looked blankly at Eddy for a moment before he realized. “You want to go back to  _Venus_?” He was shocked.

            “No shit, Sherlock. I’ve spent six years with the woman I love. You think I’m going to just walk away from that?”

            Carlos rubbed his eyes in tired frustration. “I think something can be arranged...you crazy fuck.”

* * *

            Eddy stepped out of the shuttle onto Venus, holding the straps of his backpack loaded with survival supplies. He waved as the shuttle lifted off and disappeared into the clouds. He was at the base of the mountain, and he began climbing the same steps he had climbed over six years ago. He smiled as he saw the gorgeous ghost of a woman who had tried to kill him, and then fell in love with him. The sun was disappearing over the horizon, and she was glowing with ethereal white and scarlet light. They embraced as the last vestiges of sunlight vanished from the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Was the opening section a little cliche?
> 
> also AAARRGGHHH why is it so fucking hard to indent my paragraphs?


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